The party animalIt was Russell's disco efforts, rather than his solo work, that brought him the modicum of fame he achieved in his lifetime. Released under various monikers — Dinosaur, Dinosaur L, Indian Ocean, Loose Joints — and largely collected on 2004's The World of Arthur Russell (Soul Jazz), his production lacked the heavy drum beats and mechanical sheen of the genre's biggest hits. Instead, Russell used a mélange of effects and worldly influences — African hand drums, swirling keyboards, dynamic bass lines, and vocalists — to carve out a style that was eccentric and atmospheric but still infectious and ebullient.

However anomalous they were, Russell's liquid disco songs captured the communal spirit of the subculture. They're playfully sexual (with titles like "Go Bang!" and "Is It All Over My Face?") and insistently danceable, rife with scatted, nonsense vocals and giddy throwaway lines like "I wanna see all my friends at once" that highlight the music's inherent inclusiveness. You can hear a lot of this insouciant spirit (and a similar abundance of cowbell) in the early-'00s insurgence of dancepunk (!!!, the Rapture), but perhaps most directly in last year's effervescent self-titled album by Hercules & Love Affair (DFA). (DFA producers provided a remix on one Russell reissue.)

The lonesome naifWhile his dance songs aren't impersonal, they're almost defiantly utopian, the expressions of a vision rather than an artist. After you've heard Russell's disco, his solo endeavors initially seem hauntingly lonely. Few had heard his cello work until the 2004 reissue of his masterpiece of late-career works, World of Echo (Audika). It's a landscape of cold pizzicato, amplified creaking, bristly percussion, and mournful chords, all coming from Russell's cello in tones meditative and unsettled. Songs are fragmented, or a handful of ideas stitched together. His voice, ranging from a bassy whisper to a high, Muppet-like croon, diffuses across channels like the imprint of a raindrop in a puddle.

Russell's lyrics are often difficult to understand — many of these reissues feature multiple versions of the same song, and it's apparent that Russell never sang a line the same way twice — but they're defined by a wide-eyed, childlike ambiguity. "Lucky Cloud" repeats variations on "Lucky cloud in your sky/A little rain/A lot of fun." "Hiding Your Presents From You" looks "Where you see where it is/But don't know where it is."

These lines suggest a hint of glee in the formlessness of most of Russell's cello music, and that's probably the sensibility that makes World of Echo (and Another Thought, a 2006 reissue on Orange Mountain) so transcendently gorgeous. Russell's lilting timbre feels unusually spontaneous and spiritual, as though he's singing what's in his heart before he's allowed his mind to process it.

The lovestruck strummerProbably the final revelation of Russell's back catalog, released last year on Audika, is Love is Overtaking Me, a set mostly comprised of his folk songs, which he rarely performed in public. While they usually follow more traditional, verse-chorus structures, the music magnifies the ephemeral nature of Russell's better-known work. The emotions are plainspoken, capturing small moments of beauty, love, and whimsy with flashes of magical imagery ("Don't you hear the stars? They glisten/As we go in and out") and great sensitivity ("Eli" is a brief, urgent love song to an unwanted dog).

Double duty DJ Electronica DJ Masonic, who will be performing October 5 at SPACE Gallery, has an alter ego. He is also classical music composer Mason Bates.

Death Vessel Death Vessel are something Mainers should be most proud of.

Back Beat On a Sunday afternoon in December of 1997 I hooked up with the poet Jim McCrary at a Greenwich Village saloon.

Portland scene report: October 31, 2008 Civil Disturbance drummer Nick “Nikko” Villaci, who’s been in the local rock scene long enough to have produced progeny to fill out other local bands, has announced his retirement from the original music scene.

Severed Heads “This ain’t no CBGB,” David Byrne sang during his late-set dive bomb into “Life During Wartime,” and a glance around the immensely classy premises of the Wang Theatre verified it.

Halloween Dance Party Portland brought out its dead for SPACE Gallery’s annual Halloween smash on Friday.

Same as he ever was Thirty-four years after forming the legendary band Talking Heads with fellow Rhode Island School of Design students Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, David Byrne returns to the area to perform “The Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno.”

Beyond tradition On December 6 the University of Southern Maine Composers' Showcase will offer selections from new composers for eclectic ensembles, and on December 8 the Decompression Chamber Music Ensemble will offer an interactive concert pairing Robert Schumann with Philip Glass.

Music seen: 48 Hour Music Festival "Never underestimate the power of the repeated note" was a dictum drilled into my head. Bands at SPACE gallery on Saturday night employed this method liberally, and to great success.

The outsiders Ocean's album Pantheon of the Lesser — a two-track, hour-long, deconstructionist monster — is the linchpin of what's become an exciting moment for the Portland doom metal four-piece.

TEN YEARS, A WAVE | September 26, 2014 As the festival has evolved, examples of Fowlie’s preferred breed of film—once a small niche of the documentary universe—have become a lot more common, a lot more variegated, and a lot more accomplished.

GIRLS (AND BOYS) ON FILM | July 11, 2014 The Maine International Film Festival, now in its 17th year in Waterville, remains one of the region’s more ambitious cultural institutions, less bound by a singular ambition than a desire to convey the breadth and depth of cinema’s past and present. (This, and a healthy dose of music and human-interest documentaries.) On that account, MIFF ’14 is an impressive achievement, offering area filmgoers its best program in years. With so much to survey, let’s make haste with the recommendations. (Particularly emphatic suggestions are marked in bold print.)

AMERICAN VALUES | June 11, 2014 The Immigrant seamlessly folds elements of New York history and the American promise into a story about the varieties of captivity and loyalty.

CHARACTER IS POLITICAL | April 10, 2014 Kelly Reichardt, one of the most admired and resourceful voices in American independent cinema, appears at the Portland Museum of Art Friday night to participate in a weekend-long retrospective of her three most recent films.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX | April 09, 2014 Throughout its two volumes and four hours of explicit sexuality, masochism, philosophical debate, and self-analysis, Nymphomaniac remains the steadfast vision of a director talking to himself, and assuming you’ll be interested enough in him to listen and pay close attention.